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Ray Kurzweil on Singularity 1 on 1: be who you would like to be

October 22, 2012

During our conversation with Dr. Kurzweil we cover a wide variety of topics such as: how and why at age 5 Ray decided to become an inventor; his unique background of being born to Jewish parents but brought up in a Unitarian Church; his early interest in issues such as religious tolerance, poverty, social inequality and justice; 3D printing, open source, patents, progress and intellectual property rights; Watson, artificial intelligence, the Turing Test and human rights for AI, the technological singularity and some criticism thereof; his upcoming book How To Create A Mind and his Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind; the evolutionary advantages of intelligence; and the benefits of reverse-engineering the human brain for the creation of AI and whether the latter would be interested in pondering and solving humanity’s greatest problems.

Comments (18)

I believe that Ray Kurzweil might have, but didn’t in this interview, or just didn’t think to talk about the merging of AI and the human biology and brain as a way to insure AI understands, commiserates, and doesn’t threaten humanity in the future.

Have a half dozen books by Ray Kurzweil. He ranks right up there with Buckminster Fuller as far as a comprehensive thinker – both are in my opinion (Bucky RIP) modern day Leonardo Da Vinci’s. Now, the world just needs to stay intact long enough to allow humans to witness the marvels of emerging technologies in biotechnology and nanotechnology. If you like, you can vote “yes” or “no” to the global referendum on a democratic world parliament at voteworldparliament dot org. I’m very hopeful about the future which Mr. Kurzweil so eloquently paints.

Re: increasing inequality. The American Gini Coefficient is rising steadily and in a generation or so it will be up there with Mexico’s. I don’t think it will matter if most of the population has better information technology if the bulk of the population is living in relative poverty.

“I don’t know why I’m even bothering to point it out.”
exaggeration to make a point shows not the willingness to make a point but the ability to exaggerate.

exaggeration is used for emphasis

it’s a cruel calm sky
that yesterday tore, hardly a new
but a wider, deeper and soon impenetrable hole
the rubble, today declared a disaster
tomorrow a refugee center
and soon a mountain and a monument
to a calming break from monotony and peace

Socrates is a great interviewer who asks great questions and Kurzweil’s responses were very illuminating. So many of the interviews with him are rehashes at this point. It’s very refreshing to get him talking on some new angles and levels. Awesome interview.

I’ve already commented on the video under a different screen-name, but what an awesome interview — THIS is what I’ve been waiting for for awhile….somebody really getting at Ray and asking him in-depth questions instead of him answering the usual “Derr, what is the Singularity?”.

Good bits that I liked, for example, was talking about Ramona….about how, after a certain period of time, you have no choice but to assume and accept her as a conscious entity and ‘liberate’ her — I find this akin to a parent acknowledging their child has grown up and take a step back in their lives as they reach adulthood…Strong AI’s are going to get to the point where it will be harder and harder to say that are not conscious, and so you really end up having no choice but to let them go; you can continue to rationalize that they are your creation and property, but it will end up being no different then interfering and abusing your son or daughter’s life by saying that you “own” them.

There’s lots to say from this video, but that’s why I like it….many thanks to Socrates and for getting a refreshinging new interview.

Another thing is, I like that Ray admits as Socrates pressures him that, ultimately, Strong AI’s will do as they please….as a greater intelligence, nothing truly commands their obedience….it’s all about maximizes the likelihood for “friendliness”, but creating the best possible environment in which we can hopefully foster the right values we’d want them to have…so even though they will be focused with their own superhuman issues, they will remember where they came from and hopefully care about us enough to help us with our own “trivial” issues.

But the same way a parent can try to influence their child by placing them in a certain environment, a good school and so on….all of these have profound consequences, yet nonetheless, don’t really guarantee anything…we can take efforts to better our chances, but nothing we do can truly command a greater intelligence to do what we’d want it to do, which goes without saying.

No matter what my Dog does, he can’t ultimately control me….he can beg and whine, and I’ll take care of him because I love him, but that’s something I personally feel….there’s no mind-control going on on his part to make me do what he wants.

Gabriel, it will be interesting if/when AI gets to the stage where it can no longer explain itself to us (even when dumbing itself down). How much influence/freedom/trust do you give to an entity you can no longer fully comprehend or communicate with? (asked on here a billion times before, I’m sure) Whatever happens, I hope I’m around to witness it and the Singularity.

Do we know how the time/date of the Singularity will be decided upon? And by who?

If we have to accept AIs as conscious entities and ‘liberate’ them, then how is this going to benefit us? What good are labor saving devices if they refuse to do any labor for us, either mental or physical? What good will ‘merging’ with AIs do if they all demand their own rights? Imagine if the different parts of your brain were all demanding their own rights and interests rather than working for you. When the cells of our bodies start demanding their own way we call it cancer.

Unfortunately Kurzweil’s vision, as with that of other adherents of the transhumanist cult, is grossly distorted.

His efforts to underline the very clear exponential pattern of technological development (which has been apparent to many of us for more than half a century and even quantified by Gordon Moore 40 years back) are certainly to be commended.

Nevertheless, Kurtzweil remains completely oblivious to the clear and inevitable extension of biological evolution which, by a process of self-assembly rather than direct human design, which will, within decades, transition to a new inorganic phase of the observed life process. This can already be seen as a work-in progress in the form of what we at present call the Internet.

Kurzweils great naivety in this respect no doubt stems from two factors. Firstly, a too close focus on his own specialist discipline of IT. Secondly, from anthropocentrism. This colored the beliefs of the religionists of yesteryear and, in modern times, has spurred the transhumanist mindsets of Kurzweil and most others of his ilk.

Consider this:

There are at present an estimated 2 Billion Internet users.
There are an estimated 13 Billion neurons in the human brain.

On this basis for approximation the Internet is only one order of magnitude below the brain.

That is a simplification, of course. For example:

Not all users have their own computer. So perhaps we could reduce that, say, tenfold.
The number of switching units, transistors, if you wish, contained by all the computers connecting to the Internet and which are more analogous to individual neurons is many orders of magnitude greater than 2 Billion.
Then again, this is compensated for to some extent by the fact that neurons do not appear to be binary switching devices but can adopt multiple states.

Without even crunching the numbers, we see that we must take seriously the possibility that the Internet may well be comparable to a human brain in processing power. And, of course, the degree of interconnection and cross-linking is also growing rapidly.

From a quite different evolutionary perspective we can also see that there is a very good case to be made for this entity to become a new, and predominant, phase of the on-going evolutionary “life” process that is traceable back to the formation of the chemical elements in stars and supernovae.

This broad evolutionary model is outlined, very informally, in “The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?”, a free download in e-book formats from the “Unusual Perspectives” website

Peter: I don’t see any basis for any of your statements
- “the transhumanist cult” is cheap personal attack, not a valid statement about Ray — or about transhumanists
- “clear and inevitable extension of biological evolution which, by a process of self-assembly rather than direct human design, which will, within decades, transition to a new inorganic phase of the observed life process.”: sounds to me like word salad — can you clarify exactly what you mean?
- “too close focus on his own specialist discipline of IT”: totally incorrect and off base; Ray is not a specialist in IT and has a broad, comprehensive approach to these issues — have you actually read any of his books?
- “anthropocentrism”: vague
- “estimated 13 Billion neurons in the human brain”: wrong. Estimates by neuroscientists range from 80 to 10 billion.
- “possibility that the Internet may well be comparable to a human brain in processing power”: in fact, Ray mentions this speculation in his forthcoming book — it’s of course not a new idea, highly speculative, and you haven’t provided any explanations or citations to back up this speculation, which does not seem to be the basis for a fundamental theory of intelligence, as you seem to propose.
- “broad evolutionary model”: have you actually read The Singularity Is Near? His basic ideas are extensions of macro trends in evolution

Very good video, tnx for posting. Ray gives me the impression that we are approaching ‘strong AI’ much faster than i expected. I didnt read his new book yet, but he makes it sound like the only thing missing is the funding to put it together. If 2029 is very conservative, what would be a more realistic date? 2019? Or maybe even sooner?

For some kilodays we sent messages through physical snail mail. No ‘global brain’ emerged. Too slow? Now we send them faster. The internet is mail boxes connected by tubes.

Where exactly does the emergence happen? Neither the internet nor its operators, humanity, is an integrated system, like the brain is. It’s loosely coupled, at best, but actually it’s not coupled at all in any way that brains are. This cannot lead to anything that even approaches the processes and functionality that brains have.

The internet or any means of communication will always be just as limited as our face-to-face communication: slow, error prone, nothing like the communication our nerve cells enjoy.

This is plain mystical thinking, based on false premises and logical fallacies and is so obviously wrong I don’t know why I’m even bothering to point it out.

The problem with confusing people with patent nonsense is that in our not very evolved world it so often pays the bills. I’ll skip the perspectives you offer and put my time in solid science, not opinion, and, to make better use of your time, I suggest you do, too.

It has a few billion prefrontal cortices. It is essentially a series of artificial axons that release photons and compression waves instead of neurotransmitter at their terminations, that synapse indirectly with a few billion prefrontal cortices through optical and auditory nerves. Sure its schizophrenic and a nightmare of a multiple personality disorder, but as the afferent and efferent connections between it and us become more intimate and fluid, it will become more cohesive until your thought and its thought will be very indistinct.